ON MY NOT-SO-SULLEN CRAFT
Cindy Sostchen
(The title is taken from Dylan Thomas' poem, On My Craft and Sullen Art )
(previously published in Lucid Moon )
Sculpted from chunks of metal and bits of raw bone, slow-baked in a kiln of
hyperbole and passion, the first wail of a poem as pure and greedy as a baby, and
I was there at the moment of conception. Soon it will suck its tiny red thumb and
stamp its glorious feet. Every poem is a finger, an oyster. A pot of strong
cappuccino, a bowl of maraschino cherries. I have taken mouthfuls of it, gorged
myself on free verse, immersed myself in a waterful of words, an orgy of
onomotopeia. Oh, I love poetry like Walt loved the flesh of men and Emily, her
garden. Like Blake loved the chimneys of London and Poe, the gutter. I will write a
poem as tall as the Sears Tower. I'll sign it, seal it, lick it around the edges, mail
it to the world and everyone will know my soul. With quill to the grindstone, vodka
in the flask, and my own strain of melancholic joy, I will pull strands of image, like
colored scarves, out of my poetic pocket in the abracadabra of night. I will drive my
boot whip-fast into the heart of it. I will mend it like a just-sutured wound. Ah, to
pick up my Bic, my Parker, my scalpel and make the first incision -- hoping it will
bite me back!
